Buckeye Cost Shift

About 32,000 state- and local-government employees in Ohio received more than $1 billion in pension payments in 2009 on top of their paychecks, according to an analysis of public records by eight of the state's largest newspapers, published in June.

About a quarter of Ohio's 613 school superintendents were double-dipping in 2009, the newspapers said. Districts can save money through the practice, as some benefits they normally pay would be covered by the State Teachers Retirement System.

Treacy is far from alone in Texas, where about 6,100 state employees got a combined total of about $400 million in pay and pensions in the past fiscal year, Comptroller Susan Combs has said. Another 22,000 public school and university workers also received payment from public pension and government funds, according to the Texas Association of School Boards.

Experience Pays

The experience Treacy brings to the job pays off for the state, Gregory Bailes, an Austin accountant who heads the governing board that rehired Treacy, said by telephone. Bailes joined the license-granting authority in 2005.

"His agency is one of the best-run organizations I've seen in my 31 years in the industry," Bailes said of Treacy. The board licenses and oversees certified public accountants.

"Most of the impetus behind the issue of return to covered service by state employees is due to the unfavorable publicity," said Ronald Snell, the Washington-based director of state services at the National Conference of State Legislatures. "The impression in the public's mind is that this is the way public employees cheat the system."

Public anger about double-dipping should be directed at boards and lawmakers who approved contract terms or wrote the laws rather than individuals who get the benefits, according to Bill Raabe, the National Education Association's director of collective bargaining and member advocacy in Washington.

10 States Act